


Under Stone and Over Hill

by liketreesinnovember



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe, Character Death, Dubious Consent, F/M, Implied/Referenced Incest, Kidnapping, Sexual Abuse, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-17
Updated: 2019-04-17
Packaged: 2020-01-15 13:27:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18499906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liketreesinnovember/pseuds/liketreesinnovember
Summary: Sansa and Tyrion are far flung by the winds of chance, she living as Alayne Stone of the Vale, with a father who is not her father, and he as Hugor Hill, a slave who was left to die as an infant. It is the wind that brings them together.Based on a prompt on tumblr.





	Under Stone and Over Hill

The day dawned new and bright for Alayne, for today was her name-day. It was an important day in the Eyrie, her father always made sure of that. And the biggest wonder of all was that father always had every lemon from the Mountains of the Moon to the Trident brought in for the chefs to prepare a great big cake, and every year her father promised that it would be the biggest cake she had ever seen, although truthfully, Alayne was content merely to have a cake. She would scold her father when he made such displays, reminding him that he need not do so much to win her love.

He did so much for her, she knew, and only demanded a small pittance in return. And if sometimes he asked for more, well, he  _ was _ her father, and Alayne always did her duty. She was getting too old to sit on his lap, but he liked her to anyway, saying that she would always be his little girl no matter what, and that he would never, ever abandon her to the wolves, as other men did with their bastard daughters. Alayne was lucky, indeed, that her father raised her as his own, providing her with all the comforts that a trueborn daughter would have. She wanted for nothing.

Yet sometimes, she did wonder what it was like outside of the confines of the Eyrie. She had lived her whole life atop the mountain. Lord Petyr liked to keep her close, and so she was forbidden from going very far on those rare occasions when she and Mya would venture down the mountain road.

Often, when men came up the mountain, they complained of the thin air, but not Alayne. She was used to it. She often imagined that she was a bird, way high up in the crystal air, flying where others would choke.

As she dressed for the day, Alayne recalled the strange dream she had had the night before. She had dreamed of her mother. Her father had often told her that her mother had been a great beauty, who had died giving birth to her. Yet in the dream Alayne’s mother had been holding her hand. Alayne herself was only a little girl in the dream, and her mother had been warning her against something. It seemed so real even now, the warning, and the feeling of danger, and her mother, that the memory of it lingered as real as day. In the dream her mother was a high lady, and her and father were married, although in the dream father looked different. Mother kept clinging to her fingers and telling her not to stray too far into the woods. She felt afraid of the woods, remembering a story her brother had told her about grumpkins that carried off little girls.

_ I have no brother _ , Alayne thought, shaking her head.  _ What a strange, dreamy girl I am! I am Alayne, a bird, and birds do not fear the woods, for they have the sky. _

Bastard girls did not have room for dreams. Especially dreams of being a noble lady. What would Mya think if she told her? How her friend would laugh!

The celebration of her name-day was long and elaborate. Lord Petyr had hired a troupe of mummers from Essos, jugglers and dancers and fire-eaters. The lemon cake was indeed bigger than the one the year before. Alayne wondered where father had gotten the lemons for this one.

And then, after the table had been cleared, her father brought out her gift.

Two bawdily dressed merchants stepped forward, carrying something heavy between them. A strange, decorated box was placed on the far end of the table, large enough to contain another huge lemon cake. 

Her father exchanged a quiet word with one of the merchants. Alayne did not like the look of these two. The one her father spoke to had cruel eyes. The other spoke directly to her.

“An exotic gift for a beautiful young lady,” he said. He spoke in an odd way, Alayne thought.

When the box was opened on one end, what came out was a small, childlike figure, dressed in colorful motley.  _ A dwarf, _ Sansa realized _.  _ The creature began to walk across the table on his hands, with his legs in the air, like some capering monkey.

Alayne laughed, surprised by the dwarf’s antics. It was sweet and silly and for a moment, made her forget the feeling of danger that had lingered from her dream that morning. When the dwarf finished his walk across the table, he sprang backwards and landed expertly on his feet. The room erupted into laughter and clapping as he began a grotesque dance, and Alayne laughed with them.

Once, during the dance, the creature stumbled over his own stunted legs. The lords and ladies around them laughed but Alayne did not. Neither did the man with the cruel eyes. The man’s mouth pursed in displeasure. He spoke harshly in a language Alayne did not understand, and the dwarf got up and resumed his dance, although it seemed to her that he did so with difficulty.

He was an ugly little creature, with one green eye and one black one. The black eye sparkled like dark glass, Alayne thought. He had a strange, lopsided grin, as if he were laughing at some private joke.

When he had finished the dance, the dwarf stood in front of her on the table and bowed, little bells around his neck and on his hat jangling as he did so.

“He is yours, sweetling,” Lord Baelish said. “I have been told that he is well-trained.”

Alayne did not know what to say. Something about the creature made her uneasy, and about the man with the cruel eyes.

Her father saw her expression. “Does he displease you, Alayne? Say the word and I will send him away.”

At that, the foreign man spoke angrily and rapidly. The dwarf remained with his head bowed. Behind his jolly appearance, his smiling face seemed to hide a grimace of pain. The bells he wore around his neck were attached to a metal collar that encircled his throat, and when he shifted she could see underneath where the flesh had been rubbed raw.

"No,” she said slowly. “I shall keep him, father. Thank you.” These last words she spoke quietly. Though the dwarf stood obediently, and his face was lowered in deference, she noticed that he was watching her with those strange eyes.

 

The dwarf slept in a small adjoining room in her chambers, and in want of something for him to do, Alayne would sometimes summon him to attend to her needs when there was no one else around. Truthfully, on most days she forgot about him, and sometimes she avoided him altogether. She could not shake the uneasy feeling she got when she was near him, and though he obeyed her every command, his eyes seemed to mock her, somehow, as if hiding some private joke that she would not like at all. Still, her father had gifted the dwarf to her, and she did not want to seem ungrateful. And if father sent the creature away, what would happen to him? She thought of the man with the cruel eyes.

Once, she asked the dwarf to crawl under her bed to retrieve a pair of cream-colored slippers that she could not reach. He did so, and afterwards struggled to return to his feet, his crooked legs seeming to pain him.

Alayne reached out a hand to help him up. When he was able to right himself he sat down and began to rub his legs.

“Does it hurt?” Alayne asked, now sorry that she had made him crawl under the bed.

“Do not trouble yourself with such as I, lady,” he said, fixing her with his odd eyes. “Your pretty feet need adorning, do they not?”

The question took her aback.  _ Was he making fun of her? _ It was also the first time she had heard him speak ( _ had it been the first time she had spoken to him? _ ), and she was surprised to find that he spoke well. He had been a silent, strange shadow since her name-day, and she had assumed him dim-witted.

“I am only a bastard,” Alayne said in response to his question.

“A high born bastard,” the dwarf said. “Who lives high up in the sky, and dreams of being a princess, like Rhaenys Targaryen.” He gestured to the book on her nightstand, with its gilded title.

“You can read?”

The dwarf smiled at her. “When I was a child my master gave me books, and it amused him to sit me on the table and have me recite songs and histories.”

“Your master?”

“The man who owned me, good lady.”

“There is no slavery in Westeros,” said Alayne. Yet as she spoke the words, she found herself losing her conviction in their truth. Did not her father buy him for her for her name-day? Did that make him a slave?

“As you say,” said the little man, as if reading her thoughts, in the mocking, knowing way he had that irritated her.

_ Am I then his mistress? _ The thought made Alayne uneasy. Her father did not own slaves. And yet…

_ If I am his mistress, then he should do as I say, and not be so insolent. _ “Read to me,” she said, frowning.

He read her the story of Florian the Fool and Jonquil. All the while Alayne thought about how she had prayed for a Florian, but the gods had brought her this ugly, broken creature instead.  _ A broken fool for a broken, foolish girl _ , she thought.

“What is your name?” she asked him when he was finished. “Do you have one?”

The dwarf bowed crookedly. “My master named me Hugor.”

  
  


Alayne was in the yard, looking for Mya Stone, when something caught her eye. Two of her father’s stable hands, tall, broad shouldered boys, were standing over something near where the donkeys were housed. They were laughing and their heads were bent over whatever new game they had concocted. They were cruel boys who spoke rudely to her and Mya, and once Alayne had seen them tormenting a rabbit. When she got closer she saw that it was not a rabbit this time but the little man Hugor, who was lying curled up in the dirt, trying to shield himself from the kicks and blows that the boys rained down on him, his stubby arms too short to protect his head from the worst of the blows.

Alayne bristled as she strode toward them. “You leave him alone,” she said, hating the boys even more than she had before.

"Why should we, bastard girl?” said one.

“I may be a bastard,” Alayne said, “but you’re just the stable boys, and my father will throw you in the sky cells if I say the word.”

The boys spat at her and made rude comments, but Alayne knew that they would not disobey Lord Petyr, and they made as if they grew tired of their game.

“He's already ugly and lame, anyway,” one of them said, laughing as they went off to find some other game to play.

When they left, Alayne rushed to Hugor's side. A manservant helped her carry him back to her chambers. He was bruised and bleeding from a deep cut on his head, and when she touched the injury with a wine-soaked cloth it was clear that it pained him greatly, yet he lay obediently and let her tend him.

Blood had stained his tunic, too, and Alayne had to shrug it off him to make sure he wasn't bleeding from anywhere else. She felt his ribs to make sure he was whole inside, as Mya had taught her to do with dogs, and the dwarf suffered that patiently as well.

Dark bruises had already blossomed on his skin, and on his back Alayne noticed a series of long, raised welts, these much older. He looked like a horse that had had too much of the crop.

Hugor watched her as she worked.

“Did your former master do that?” Alayne asked.

His shoulders shrugged in answer.

“My father hurts me, too,” Alayne said softly.

  
  


Alayne continued to ask Hugor to read for her, and would often summon him nights when she couldn't sleep. She came to discover that he spent much of the night awake, and she found that it comforted her to know that she could call for him and he would hear.

One night she dreamt the dream again, the dream of mother and father, only mother and father were different people in the dream. She tried to call for her father but his face kept shifting, and then he was in her bed...

Alayne screamed, and woke in darkness, but she wasn’t alone. At first she thought of the dream, and father, and she recoiled, but the voice that spoke to her was not Lord Baelish’s.

“‘Twas only a dream, my lady,” said Hugor, patting her hand.

“Do you never sleep?” she asked the dwarf as her eyes began to adjust to the darkness, so that she could make out his small form beside her bed.

“Perhaps I only need half as much as normal men,” he said, grinning.

Alayne took his hand. “Stay with me.”

  
  


For the next several nights, Hugor slept atop the bedclothes at her feet. Sometimes she would fall asleep to the sound of his reading or reciting poetry, and she came to find the sound of his voice a great comfort.

One night he was reading to her from a book of - rather florid - poetry, and Alayne sat up in bed.

“Hugor.”

He paused in his reading. “Yes, my lady?”

“You are a man.”

“I am…” He looked momentarily startled by the question, but it was quickly replaced by the familiar lopsided grin. “Half of one, at least.”

“I mean…” Alayne lowered her eyes.

Hugor took her hint. “Is that what makes a man a man?” He asked, raising an eyebrow. “In motley or in lord’s clothing?”

“You’ve known women.”

“Aye.” Hugor’s mismatched gaze seemed to grow distant. She thought of the whip marks she had seen on his back.

She looked at him. He  _ was _ a man, though she didn’t know why she had never thought of him that way before. How many times had she undressed in his presence, or slept with him at the foot of her bed? There was a time when she would have thought of no man but her father. She felt guilty for even thinking it. But there was also freedom in that thought. If nothing else truly belonged to her, this could.

Alayne thought carefully before she spoke. “Hugor...I want you to...I want you to share my bed.”

“I am yours to command,” he said.

“Don’t say that,” she said, frowning. She didn’t want him that way. Not like...not like that.

Hugor reached across the bed and took her hands in his. She met his eyes, and she could see there that he wanted her.

Alayne curled her fingers around his shorter ones, and leaned forward to kiss him.

There were other marks on his body. He'd been burned and carved and beaten, and sometimes when she touched him he flinched away from her. Sometimes he merely went limp and let her do what she wanted, and it took a while to bring him back to her. But when he lay, calm and sated, with his head against her chest, Alayne felt that she could stay like this forever.

  
  


In the coming weeks and months, as the days grew colder and the light began to flee from the world, talk came to the ears of the Eyrie of a threat from across the Narrow Sea. An exiled princess, a sorceress who used blood magic. Oh, and dragons.

Daenerys Targaryen had landed in Gulltown. The people came inland. The Lords of the Vale all came to the Eyrie, to hide in their high nest. There were feasts every day, and dances, and the talk of dragons and strange, dark magic seemed so remote that it was hard to take seriously, yet underneath it all was a growing tension, and like water slowly filling a tub, it would eventually spill over. Tensions also grew between some of the lords and her father, and there was talk of a title stolen, yet all pretended that nothing was amiss. Instead, they made merry in Lord Baelish’s hall, and Alayne joined in the laughter and jesting.

“Have the dwarf brought in!” The Lords shouted, as they downed their cups. And Hugor was brought in.

“Tell us a story,” they said.

And Hugor began to regale them with a tale of Aegon and his sisters that was more legend than truth, but it was a good story, Alayne had to admit.

“No Targaryens,” said Lord Nestor. “Something amusing.”

“Yes,” said Lord Petyr. “I think we all could use a good laugh.”

Hugor turned to him and bowed, then fixed her father with his knowing, mismatched gaze. “I know a story about a girl who dreamed she was a princess, held captive in a tower. She lived with a man who called her daughter, though he was not her father, and who loved her so much that he put her on his lap each night.”

Anyone in the hall might have missed the ever so slight narrowing of Lord Petyr’s eyes, but Alayne saw. Silently, she sent a prayer to the Mother that Hugor would not say anything else.

“What is the rest of the story?” called Bronze Yohn Royce.

Hugor’s mouth twisted into a grin and he spread his arms wide. “Everyone is eaten by a dragon,” he said.

“Your fool is quite mad, Littlefinger,” said Lord Yohn.  
  


That night, Alayne was woken by a sound, only to be reassured by the presence of Hugor next to her, asleep and breathing softly.

Then the door to her bedroom opened, and there were guards in the room, two of them dragging Hugor out of bed and another one taking her by the arm.

“Caught the monster in the act, we did,” said one of the men who had Hugor.

“You are safe now, my lady,” said the man who held her.

 

Numbly, Alayne sat through the sentencing. Hugor was taken to the sky cells, awaiting execution. Her father’s rage had been quite terrible to behold. She could not have possibly explained. More than anything, the guilt for what she had done played its song over and over in her head.  _ I asked him to _ , she thought.  _ It's my fault, I asked him to. _

Afterwards, she had wept in Mya’s arms, and her friend had comforted her, saying how kind she was to weep for such a creature. No one knew the truth. No one could understand, even if she had tried to make them. Alayne felt more alone than ever.

 

On the third day after Hugor’s sentencing, Alayne awoke to great echoes of thunder from beneath and above her.

Slowly, as she woke, she was able to discern the different sounds. Fighting. Men clashing swords, screaming, dying. And here and there, a great roar that rose above all else.

The dragons had come at last.

Alayne ran out into the hall in her dressing gown, and what she could see through the great windows made her breath stop in her throat.

The sky was on fire. And through the smoke, the shadow of great wings.

She ran down the hall towards the stairs, and was met with a sudden wall of heat, and a noxious smell that set her stomach turning over and her nose wrinkling, but she pushed forward.

When she reached the hall, she was met by chaos. Chairs and tables were overturned, and men were carrying bone plates and silver cups and casks of wine, the familiar things that she had known since she was a girl being sorted through and discarded like items on display at a merchant’s booth. These were men that Alayne had once trusted, noble men, but now they seemed animals, looting whatever they could and leaving the rest.

Across the hall, a mob had gathered, led by Lord Yohn Royce, carrying something lumpy and bloodstained.

It was her father’s head.

Alayne turned and ran back up the stairs before they saw her. There was nowhere else to go except towards the sky cells.

_ Hugor _ .

Alayne heard screams as she raced to the place where she knew the goaler kept his keys. Cries of “The Vale!” and “Lord Yohn!” and “Dragons! The Dragon Queen has come!” leapt up from below.  _ Everyone has gone mad _ , she thought _.  _ While she had slept, the world had become madness and death, and fire and blood. 

She found Mord, the goaler, dead, and had to stop herself from staring at the charred body so she could grab the key quickly and get to Hugor.

What if Hugor was dead already, though? The sky cells were exposed and vulnerable, and the dragons had attacked from the air. What if Hugor had fallen? She could not think of that, though, she could only think of freeing him.

When finally, with trembling hands, she managed to unlock the door to his cell, she was greeted first by a blood red sky. She found him in a corner farthest away from the open air, huddled against the wall. His eyes went to her and he said something that might have been “go” or perhaps “no,” but she could not hear over the sounds of battle below and the wind whipping around the cell.

Men were coming up the stairs. Alayne heard their footsteps. Her father was dead, and they would kill her if they found her. She could see their shadows on the wall as they made their way closer…

Then a cry huge and terrible, and so close.  _ A dragon's cry! _ Alayne turned and saw the great beast fly towards them. Its form was black as night and eclipsed the blood red sun, and atop its back was a rider.

The woman had short cropped silvery hair, and silvery armor, and violet eyes. Alayne had never seen anyone like her. With surprise, Alayne noted that the rider was a girl not that much older than she was, slight and pretty of face. Her violet eyes saw Alayne, and then Hugor, and something passed between them that Alayne could not quite describe.

The rider reached out her hand. She was so close that Alayne could almost touch her.

The heat from the fire intensified behind her. Alayne had one arm wrapped around Hugor, who was breathing heavily, and reached with the other arm toward the outstretched fingers of the girl with the violet eyes. Far below, the earth was aflame, and around her there was only empty sky, and fire and death behind her on the stairs.

Clinging tightly to Hugor, Alayne leapt forward. Either the dragon queen would reach them, or the air would carry her. She was a bird, and would let the wind decide.


End file.
